


Let Me In

by sovery



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Freeform, Post-Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, unhappy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4417820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovery/pseuds/sovery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post NFA, Buffy/Spike. These are the pieces of a fractured, fragile life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me In

**Author's Note:**

> AN: All italics from Deborah Levy’s play Eva and Moses, which is super short, and super amazing, and you should all go read it.

_1\. I will not be tempted._

Sometimes Buffy forgets to eat. She is already too thin. He will bring her smoked salmon or sweets, buys her fairy cakes from local shops. Sometimes she will take a mouthful or two, before sighing and pushing sustenance aside. Does the stuff taste like ashes in her mouth?

He cannot coax her to eat, or sleep, or even come out in the sunlight when she is in a mood. It is not stubbornness, he thinks. He wishes it were.

_2\. Come back to me_

She has very expressive eyes. They have been bright with anger and passion, and filled with tears. They are eyes that can strip a man bare. They have.

They are often fixed on faraway points, now. It is not new for his lover to see things he doesn't. But Buffy isn't mad.

_3\. I am here with you_

They both go quiet around the anniversary of the final assault on Wolfram and Hart. Spike knows she is mourning Angel, and wishes he could tell her he misses the other man too. He also thinks of Gunn, and Illyria, and all the others who died. And he wonders- would she have mourned him this much?

She goes for a walk in the rain. When she is back from the pharmacy, her skin is so cold to the touch that for one awful moment he thinks-

_4\. Let me in_

He fears she never will.

_5\. I can hear you dream when you are alone_

She is swimming in daydreams. They curl around her head, semitransparent, speaking glossolia. She is not quite awake and doesn't care to be, doesn't desire to ever leave the hazy half-twilight of unnecessary sleep. Her ghosts are whispy, pleasant things.

_6\. Touch me_

She does.

_7\. I wanted to be happy_

He came to her as soon as he could, to let her know he was alive. He knows her, perhaps better than anyone, and he doesn't expect anything from her but he still hopes. She is mad with worry and shocked to see him and as it turns out, she didn't know what had happened. That he was alive. That when Angel had asked Giles for help he had-

And all she saw was LA burning and Dawn tells him she stopped sleeping the day she stopped crying.

Six months later he buys her a ring she will not accept. But she moves in with him. And she tries.

_8\. There is a little silence in all of us_

She likes it when he sings. Within a week of shanshuing he picked up a second-hand guitar. It was a new thing to learn, untainted by too many past associations. She never tells him that she likes how it is unique to him. Still, Spike was always perceptive. He may very well know. He asked her if she wanted to learn and she shrugged. She doesn't hum anymore.

_9\. It is not a bandage I want_

Her palm is bleeding. She watches it dispassionately. It is not a shallow cut. The carrots and the onions lay on the cutting board, undisturbed as she listens to the quiet tick of the clock, the almost silent whisper of her heart.

When Spike finds her there, he wraps a damp tea towel around her hand and has her elevate it. His expression is an awful thing to see. She wouldn't have thought an ex-vampire would have been so squeamish about a little blood.

_10\. I have no right to expect love. Great love. As if it was a debt the world owed me._

There are no happy endings here.


End file.
